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Descrizione dettagliata lotto
These two enamels by Jean II Pénicaud, a Limoges enamel painter active between 1532 and 1549, complement the series of eighteen plaques devoted to the legend of Saint Martial, first bishop and patron saint of Limoges.
The first plaque depicts a particularly rare scene: the assault on Saint Martial and his companions Alpinien and Austriclinien by pagan priests during their mission of evangelisation. Austriclinien died during the journey and was miraculously brought back to life by Martial. The episode of the assault, absent from the earliest versions of the legend, is recounted in the Vita sancti Martialis attributed to the pseudo-Aurelian, which recounts how the three companions were slandered and imprisoned by the pagan priests. It finds a visual counterpart in the shrine of Saint Martial preserved in the Louvre Museum, Paris (inv. no. OA 8101).
The second plaque depicts the beheading of Saint Valerie, a young woman converted by Saint Martial. Following the death of her mother, Valerie renounced her marriage to her fiancé, Duke Stephen, in order to devote herself to charity; he consequently ordered her execution. When the squire had beheaded her, divine lightning struck the executioner, killing him instantly. Pénicaud chose to depict this suspended moment: the young woman kneels awaiting the fatal blow, while a green ray descending from the sky already announces the lightning about to strike. The story continues on another plaque from the series, now in the Musée des Beaux-Arts de Limoges, where Valerie carries her severed head to Saint Martial as he celebrates Mass.
The cycle draws upon a layered textual tradition. The ninth century Vita antiquior constitutes the first major compilation of the legend; it is notably in this text that the figure of Saint Valerie first appears. At the beginning of the eleventh century, Adémar de Chabannes’s Vita prolixior establishes Martial as an apostolic saint and the first evangeliser of Gaul. The Vita of the pseudo-Aurelian subsequently enriches the cycle with episodes of persecution. Pénicaud thus transformed several centuries of hagiographical tradition into a coherent visual cycle, whose unity is also evident in its technique: although more accustomed to grisaille, he demonstrates here his mastery of polychromy. The coherence of the cycle extends to its smallest details: Pénicaud used the same enamel for Saint Martial’s tunic throughout the series, and the similar alteration of this colour over time has produced the same brown, flaking tone on each plaque, still allowing the saint to be identified from one scene to another.
As Véronique Notin, former curator of the Musée des Beaux-Arts de Limoges, has demonstrated, architecture occupies a central place in Pénicaud’s compositions. On the plaque depicting the assault, the background represents the Abbey of Saint Martial with its pinnacled tower, a building now lost, anchoring the episode in the very landscape of Limoges. The same architectural backdrop appears on one of the plaques that resurfaced at Giquello in 2024, depicting God appearing to Saint Martial and his companions in Limoges, confirming that Pénicaud drew upon a coherent repertoire of urban views throughout the cycle. Although idealised, these representations provide a valuable source for the study of Limoges’s urban architecture in the sixteenth century.
Commissioned for the Basilica of the Saviour, the principal church of the former Abbey of Saint Martial, the series was still described in 1765 as eighteen panels assembled within a single frame. It was subsequently dispersed under circumstances that remain unclear. The earliest known owner of the present two plaques was Baron Alexandre-Étienne-Guillaume de Théis (1765-1842), Prefect of Haute-Vienne in Limoges from 1830 to 1833. Other Limousin collectors of the same period, including Prefect Germeau (1835–1838) and the Bardinet collection, recorded by Maurice Ardant, also owned plaques from the series, suggesting that the dispersal originated in Limoges itself. The two present plaques had not appeared on the market since the Goldschmidt sale of 1888; their existence was known only through early descriptions, including the catalogue of the 1867 Exposition Universelle, where they were lent by Adolphe de Théis (no. 2876), alongside two other plaques from the series lent by Gustave de Rothschild (1829-1911) (no. 2875). This same 1867 catalogue records the presence of a crowned P, Pénicaud’s mark, which is now illegible.
With the reappearance in June 2024, at Giquello in Paris, of six previously unknown plaques, and the addition of the present two, more than half of the cycle can now be accounted for, alongside the plaques in the British Museum, London (inv. no. 1913,1220.15) and the two from the Gustave de Rothschild collection, preserved at the Musée des Beaux-Arts de Limoges since their pre-emption at Christie’s in 2014. Absent from the market for more than a century and previously unpublished in photographs, these two plaques restore two episodes hitherto missing from the cycle and testify to the ambition of the programme commissioned from Pénicaud: to transform the legend of Saint Martial into a painted narrative, both devotional and deeply rooted in the landscape of his city.
The first plaque depicts a particularly rare scene: the assault on Saint Martial and his companions Alpinien and Austriclinien by pagan priests during their mission of evangelisation. Austriclinien died during the journey and was miraculously brought back to life by Martial. The episode of the assault, absent from the earliest versions of the legend, is recounted in the Vita sancti Martialis attributed to the pseudo-Aurelian, which recounts how the three companions were slandered and imprisoned by the pagan priests. It finds a visual counterpart in the shrine of Saint Martial preserved in the Louvre Museum, Paris (inv. no. OA 8101).
The second plaque depicts the beheading of Saint Valerie, a young woman converted by Saint Martial. Following the death of her mother, Valerie renounced her marriage to her fiancé, Duke Stephen, in order to devote herself to charity; he consequently ordered her execution. When the squire had beheaded her, divine lightning struck the executioner, killing him instantly. Pénicaud chose to depict this suspended moment: the young woman kneels awaiting the fatal blow, while a green ray descending from the sky already announces the lightning about to strike. The story continues on another plaque from the series, now in the Musée des Beaux-Arts de Limoges, where Valerie carries her severed head to Saint Martial as he celebrates Mass.
The cycle draws upon a layered textual tradition. The ninth century Vita antiquior constitutes the first major compilation of the legend; it is notably in this text that the figure of Saint Valerie first appears. At the beginning of the eleventh century, Adémar de Chabannes’s Vita prolixior establishes Martial as an apostolic saint and the first evangeliser of Gaul. The Vita of the pseudo-Aurelian subsequently enriches the cycle with episodes of persecution. Pénicaud thus transformed several centuries of hagiographical tradition into a coherent visual cycle, whose unity is also evident in its technique: although more accustomed to grisaille, he demonstrates here his mastery of polychromy. The coherence of the cycle extends to its smallest details: Pénicaud used the same enamel for Saint Martial’s tunic throughout the series, and the similar alteration of this colour over time has produced the same brown, flaking tone on each plaque, still allowing the saint to be identified from one scene to another.
As Véronique Notin, former curator of the Musée des Beaux-Arts de Limoges, has demonstrated, architecture occupies a central place in Pénicaud’s compositions. On the plaque depicting the assault, the background represents the Abbey of Saint Martial with its pinnacled tower, a building now lost, anchoring the episode in the very landscape of Limoges. The same architectural backdrop appears on one of the plaques that resurfaced at Giquello in 2024, depicting God appearing to Saint Martial and his companions in Limoges, confirming that Pénicaud drew upon a coherent repertoire of urban views throughout the cycle. Although idealised, these representations provide a valuable source for the study of Limoges’s urban architecture in the sixteenth century.
Commissioned for the Basilica of the Saviour, the principal church of the former Abbey of Saint Martial, the series was still described in 1765 as eighteen panels assembled within a single frame. It was subsequently dispersed under circumstances that remain unclear. The earliest known owner of the present two plaques was Baron Alexandre-Étienne-Guillaume de Théis (1765-1842), Prefect of Haute-Vienne in Limoges from 1830 to 1833. Other Limousin collectors of the same period, including Prefect Germeau (1835–1838) and the Bardinet collection, recorded by Maurice Ardant, also owned plaques from the series, suggesting that the dispersal originated in Limoges itself. The two present plaques had not appeared on the market since the Goldschmidt sale of 1888; their existence was known only through early descriptions, including the catalogue of the 1867 Exposition Universelle, where they were lent by Adolphe de Théis (no. 2876), alongside two other plaques from the series lent by Gustave de Rothschild (1829-1911) (no. 2875). This same 1867 catalogue records the presence of a crowned P, Pénicaud’s mark, which is now illegible.
With the reappearance in June 2024, at Giquello in Paris, of six previously unknown plaques, and the addition of the present two, more than half of the cycle can now be accounted for, alongside the plaques in the British Museum, London (inv. no. 1913,1220.15) and the two from the Gustave de Rothschild collection, preserved at the Musée des Beaux-Arts de Limoges since their pre-emption at Christie’s in 2014. Absent from the market for more than a century and previously unpublished in photographs, these two plaques restore two episodes hitherto missing from the cycle and testify to the ambition of the programme commissioned from Pénicaud: to transform the legend of Saint Martial into a painted narrative, both devotional and deeply rooted in the landscape of his city.